Collected here are thirty of Mercè Rodoreda's most moving and inventive stories, presented in chronological order of their publication from three of Rodoreda's most beloved short-story collections; Twenty-Two Stories, It Seemed Like Silk and Other Stories, and My Christina and Other Stories. These short fictions capture Rodoreda's full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating tradition-Rodoreda's "women are notable for their almost pathological lack of volition, but also for their acute sensitivity, a nearly painful awareness of beauty" (Natasha Wimmer).